Experts believe that ‘approximately a quarter of all serving officers are engaged on Operation Yewtree, twenty percent on historical abuse complaints and the remainder on investigating police cock ups at Hillsborough, the Miner’s strike and ‘that fracas outside the House of Commons’.

A police spokesman has issued a public apology today for recent reports suggesting that certain suspects had ‘distinctive tattoos’. ‘For example, we recently stated that a suspect wanted in connection with a triple murder had a distinctive spider’s web tattoo on his neck. ‘It has been confirmed that this narrowed the list of suspects in the UK to around 500,000 people, predominantly male, many below the age of thirty-six and with an IQ of 90 or less.

Syrian president Bashir Assad has denied dropping chlorine gas on a town in the northeast of the country, citing an outdated technicality in international law. The clause, which dates back to 1873, states: ‘whoever smelt it dealt it,’ implying that rebel groups might have released the harmful gas themselves, presumably in order to gain international support.